The Renault 4 (or R4, for short) launched in 1961, replacing the 4CV which was their postwar everyman's mini car. It's a tiny little thing, about twelve feet long and weighing in at something like fourteen hundred pounds.
Designed as an inexpensive but modern-looking ride, the two-box styling certainly was a more appropriate look in the go-go Sixties than the pontoon fendered car it replaced. Under the hood was a longitudinally-oriented inline four driving the front wheels, originally the 745cc unit from the Renault 4CV, but soon upgraded to the 845cc motor from the Dauphine.
The first ones had a three-speed manual gearbox, and the 4's shifter was a funky lever sticking horizontally straight out of the dashboard. In 1968, the R4 received a fourth gear ratio, and with only thirty-some-odd horsepower on tap, the driver would be visiting all of them frequently on any terrain more hilly than a billiard table.
Incidentally, the rear suspension is trailing arms attached to lateral torsion bars, and the torsion bars are one in front of the other, but the trailing arms are the same length, so the wheelbase on the left side is almost two inches shorter than the wheelbase on the right.
Renault made a blue million of these things in factories all over the world (actually over eight million) between 1961 and 1992. Only a handful of external changes were made over the years, making specific year models difficult to discern from one another.
Fortunately this one's easy to pin down as a 1989 R4 Savane because it was recently up for sale and listed at Sotheby's. I photographed it in May of 2021 using a Pentax Q7 and the 5-15mm f/2.8-4.5 02 Standard Zoom lens.
I think the Citroen 2CV had the handle shifter as well. Today I learned the Trabant had one.
ReplyDeleteIt seems so strange. I’d like to try driving one.
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